


Requiem

by tearinmyarc



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Angst, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Depressed John, Depression, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Eurus Holmes - Freeform, F/M, Getting Together, He gets better i promise, Holmes Brothers, Holmes Family, Honestly I wish Moriarty was not dead, I feel bad for Eurus but she drowned a child in a well so, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, One Shot, POV John Watson, Sherlock AU, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Friendship, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson One Shot, The Final Problem, The Final Problem AU, The Reichenbach Fall, The Reichenbach Fall AU, They Love Each Other OK, im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tearinmyarc/pseuds/tearinmyarc
Summary: "He told me he loved me and I couldn't say it back, then he disappeared for two years. Now he's back in my life and I’m going through the motions all over again. If anything, it proves that I won't stop."Before the fall, Sherlock ends the call with "I love you."
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I had this idea like right before I fell asleep after rewatching all of Sherlock and now here we are.  
> Plus everyone's quarantined so might as well write some sappy Johnlock!  
> Obviously I changed some major things story wise...but I borrowed some quotes and threw in some references for good measure.

They had been in this torturous deadly maze for hours now. Every new room held another horrifying experience, each worse than the last. Moriarty was dead. He had been dead for years now. Undoubtedly dead. But he still found a way to torture them, to make their lives hell.

The dreams, the fights, the doubts, the death of his best friend and his surprising return, more dreams, more fights, more doubts. It was enough to make even a hardened man like John Watson start to crumble. He was losing it. He had been since the day he watched his best (and sometimes only) friend throw himself off a roof. His mind was slowly unraveling. And now this.

Now here he is having to listen to a newly discovered and certainly unstable “sister” demand that Sherlock Holmes tell Molly Hooper that he is in love with her.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

_This cannot be happening. Stupid bloody brave stupid man._ John's mind raced, his pulse quick and uneven. His phone started to ring. He wrestled his phone from his pocket and hastily answered as he stepped out of the taxi and rushed towards the hospital.

“Sherlock!”

“Don’t move! Stay exactly where you are!”

“What-Sherlock what’s going on?”

He knew what was happening. He now knew that there was only one way to end it. But he didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it. He had to pretend it wasn’t happening. He had to hold on to the little hope he had left.

“It’s all fake.”

The rest of what Sherlock says hits his ears but he doesn’t hear it. Mind spinning, trying to put the pieces together. _No no no please god no._ He tries to argue, to make Sherlock see. To make him understand that he will never believe that he is a fraud, that he will be amazed by him until the end of time.

“What about that day? In the lab. You knew everything about me!”

It doesn’t work he can’t stop it. His heart constricts in his chest.

“Goodbye John. I love you.”

“You what-no. Sherlock!”

He watches as Sherlock falls and falls and falls. His feet start to move of their own accord. He’s stumbling, dazed. A biker runs directly into him. John falls and lurches back to his feet. _There’s no way. He’s not dead. He’s alive. Somehow. He can’t be dead. He’s Sherlock Holmes._

John rounds the corner and starts to push at the crowd already gathering. 

“Please let me through! Im a doctor. He’s my friend. Please”

He finally breaks through the throng and there he is. His eyes still open, his face a bloodied mess. John reaches out and grabs at his wrist, praying he feels even the smallest pulse. Nothing. John tries to stand but he collapses. He feels hands grabbing him, trying to pull him to his feet, but he cant focus on anything except for the lifeless body being placed onto the stretcher and taken into the hospital. _Impossible. Improbable. Illogical._ All John could hear was Sherlock's voice in his head telling him that what he was seeing couldn't be real. _He said he loves me._

The next few days passed in a haze. John helped Mycroft prepare the funeral. Mrs. Hudson stayed close, a near constant presence in the flat, concern visible in the lines of her face. A surprising amount of people came to the funeral. Sherlock helped a lot of people but John hadn’t expected many to show. Even Donovan and Anderson were present. Most likely because of the guilt that weighed on their consciences but he was still glad to see them in attendance. 

When he finally had a moment alone with Sherlock, it was so much more painful than he could have imagined. Trying to talk to his head stone. He pictured Sherlock standing in front of his own grave, a smirk on his face. After a few minuets of grappling with his own grief filled thoughts, he opened his mouth and spoke from the heart. 

“Regardless of what you may have thought, you were the best man and the most human human being I have ever known. And without you, I will never be whole again. What you said to me before you jumped...I-II. It’s not fair. It’s not bloody fair.” John could feel the anger, the confusion, the hurt, all rising in him.

“How could you say that to me before-before doing that. It’s not fair. Not fair at all.” 

John takes a long shaky breath and prepares himself to say what he had been holding inside since that first chase. That first night, when he had left his cane behind and his trauma had started to melt away. That first real time he spent with Sherlock Holmes. 

“I have loved you for almost as long as I have known you. And I will love you until my dying breath. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you that when you were still here. So please, for me, one last miracle Sherlock. Please don’t be dead.”

Months passed. John thought about Sherlock every damn day. Everyday his first and last thoughts were of him. The nightmares were constant. He started seeing his therapist once a week. He went back to work at the clinic. He moved out of 221B Baker St., too many memories, too many ghosts there. Nothing really helped though. Every damn day.

Meeting Mary when he did, John knew it saved him. She was so lovely and caring and kind and just generally wonderful. She made the pain subside. It was still there but she made it manageable. She understood John and she understood that Sherlock Holmes would forever be the skeleton in his closet. They were happy and life started to not be so hard. The day John decided to propose everything changed. 

Just when everything was looking up. Just when John had managed to move on with his life. There stood Sherlock Holmes. Alive. Johns world was completely turned upside down again. You cant really blame him for punching him in the face. Twice. 

John tried. He really really tried to keep Sherlock at arms length, to not let him get too close again. But every night in his dreams he heard “Goodbye John. I love you.” What was he to do? He couldn’t ignore him, the man he had mourned for two years was alive again. Their friendship reformed. It took some time and some fighting and one mission to save London from a terrorist attack. But they began to slip back into their old routine. Working together to solve London’s most confusing crimes. They never discussed what was said before Sherlock’s death. John had no idea how to approach that conversation. It was much easier to just carry on like they had before.

With the wedding growing closer Mary and Sherlock started to become true friends. Mary even started coming along and helping them. As wonderful as it was for his two best friends in the world to be so close it was also...confusing. John loved Mary, he did. A lot. But Sherlock was here in the flesh and they were solving crimes again. It stirred up feelings that John had spent a lot of time burying. _He told me he loved me and I couldn’t say it back, then he disappeared for two years. Now he’s back in my life and I’m going through the motions all over again. If anything, it proves that I wont stop. I can’t stop._

The wedding was lovely. Their daughter was lovely. But John felt like a piece of him was missing. It was stuck in 221B Baker St. with Sherlock Holmes. He couldn’t let go. He had told his headstone that he would love him until his dying breath and that was proving to be irrevocably true. 

The day John lost Mary was one of the worst days of his life. Second only to the day he lost Sherlock. He was angry. Angry at the world for giving her to him and taking her away, angry that their daughter would never know her wonderful mother, and angry that she had thrown herself in front of Sherlock and taken that bullet. His life would have been so much easier if she hadn’t. He could have let go of Sherlock once and for all. But now she was gone and it was Sherlock’s fault and John just wanted it to stop. All of it. The pining, and the guilt, and the confusion. Maybe now that Sherlock had royally fucked up he could stop loving him. 

But he didn’t. He shut him out, he refused his help, he refused to be pulled back in. It didn't work. And inevitably, Sherlock didn’t leave him be for long. He came crashing back into his life, drug addled and pompous as ever. And John loved him for it. Sherlock had driven himself straight to the bottom of the pit and crashed as hard as he ever had, just to ensure that John was back in his life. Of course it worked. Sherlock and Mary once again saving John Watson from himself. 

With the defeat of the crazed serial killer Culverton Smith came the discovery of Eurus Holmes. A Holmes Sister, who would’ve thought. She was just as intelligent as the other Holmes and twice as psychotic. And now here they were. Trapped in a web of her and Moriarty’s design. Stumbling from horror to horror. All John could do was pray that they all made it out alive. But that didn’t seem possible. _If I’m gonna die I need to hear it from him again. I have to._

“Tell her you love her. Tell her you love her like you mean it. Or her flat explodes.” 

John could see the pain in Sherlock’s eyes. This would ruin Molly, but they couldn’t let her die. 

“Just do it Sherlock...she’ll be ok”

“Will she John? How did you feel when I said those words to you moments before my death? I seriously doubt Eurus will let us out of here alive. Is it really worth it? To hurt her like I hurt you?”

John sucked in a harsh breath. He felt tears spring to his eyes. “Yes it is. Because it’s you.” 

He saw something then in Sherlock’s face. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like a mixture of determination and something else. 

“Molly Hooper…”

“Yes Sherlock? What is it? Please just say whatever you’re going to say, I'm tired of your games.”

“Molly Hooper I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I’m in love with John and I have been for some time. I’m sorry.” 

John felt the tears fall down his face, his lip trembling. They were dead. They were so dead, but Sherlock said it again. And in front of his brother, estranged sister, and Molly Hooper. He loved him and that was all that mattered. Let them die in each others arms then.

John strode towards Sherlock, grabbed him by the back of the neck and crashed their lips together. He felt Sherlock's surprise, soon replaced with eager reciprocation. _I’m kissing Sherlock bloody Holmes. I’m about to die but I’m going to die kissing Sherlock bloody Holmes._ John thrust his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth, Sherlock groaned and wrapped his arms around John’s waist. Then John heard what sounded like a growl. Unsure of where the sound came from he fisted his hands in Sherlock’s curls, refusing to let go of him. He felt a pinprick in his neck. 

“What-”

“John I love you.”

“I love you too. I always have.” 

He felt himself sway, he watched as Sherlock fell to the floor, and then darkness.

When John opened his eyes he saw very little. It was dark and cold and wet and there was a piercing pain in his head.

“Sherlock?,” he called out hesitantly.

“Sherlock!” No response.

He began to investigate his surroundings. The wall behind him made of rock, water up to his knees, a chain wrapped around his leg keeping him in place, and unmistakably, bones floating in the water. _This is not how this was supposed to go._

Sherlock was coming to get him. Sherlock would save him, of course he would. He was brilliant. The water level was rising now as water started to flood the well. John felt the panic rise in his throat. _He loves you he loves you he loves you._

He could hear Sherlock in his ear now. He was saying something about dates being wrong, seemed irrelevant to John but that probably meant that Sherlock was well on his way to finding him. Which was good because the water was chest level now. Much longer and John would be dead alongside Redbeard.

The water was at his neck, his mouth moments from being submerged when a rope swings down and John grabs onto it for dear life. He’s lifted out of the well. Another Sherlock Holmes miracle. He’s saved his life yet again. John gratefully collapses into Sherlock’s arms. He’s so tired and relived it takes a moment before he’s noticed that Eurus is stood next to him. He flinches and Sherlock holds on to him tighter. 

“It’s alright. She’s not going to hurt you. Not anymore” 

John’s so exhausted he just accepts that as truth. 

“You saved me. Again” 

“I’ll always save you.”

Eurus is loaded into the back of a van and taken away, presumably back to her cell. John and Sherlock are wrapped in a blanket, filling Lestrade in. Even though they both almost died and he’s pretty sure he’s in shock, John is undeniably filled with happiness. They didn’t die and Sherlock Holmes loves him. And now he knows that John loves him right back.

Epilogue

It’s been months since “The Final Problem” as John has taken to calling it in his blog. Things are better than ever. Eurus is back in her cell. She's allowed family visits now and Sherlock is happy to oblige her by playing the violin alongside her. John has moved back into 221B Baker St. with Rosie. He and Sherlock share a room now. They still bicker over things like heads in the fridge and knives stabbed into the wood of the mantel, but now instead of storming out of the flat for air, John grabs Sherlock by the shirt and kisses him senseless. They’re happy, they’re in love. Molly and Lestrade come round to see Rosie, Mrs. Hudson reminds them that she’s not their nanny, and John and Sherlock solve mysterious crimes. They’ve gone through a lot of hard times together and John is sure they will go through plenty more, but at least now they will go through them together, hand in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for any pain I've caused. I caused myself pain writing this is if that helps. Lemme know what you think!


End file.
